Nostalgia for the win!
Nickelodeon launches their first NFT drop based off 90s cartoons.
Steve Aoki throws cake in the metaverse.
And Microsoft's Minecraft says no to NFTs.
But will other top gaming platforms follow their lead?
My name is Deezy.
This is your Friday NFT wrap-up.
Let's get it!
"Move it, Football Head!"
Although she's secretly in love with him,
Helga Pataki can pretend to hate Arnold Shortman on the blockchain forever.
Cartoon powerhouse Nickelodeon, powered by RECUR,
recently released their first NFT drop featuring characters from the classic 90s kids shows
Rugrats and Hey Arnold!
This drop of 10,000 cartoon NFTs from the Splat Factory sold out pretty fast
and quickly gained some serious momentum on the secondary markets.
And nostalgia alone didn't carry this drop to the top 5 on OpenSea.
The interesting about this project is the utility of each rarity.
Each NFT, like most project, varies in rarity,
except in this project, the rarity equates to a Slime Score.
Slime is a limited rare element.
And there's only 5,000 of them.
If you decide to slime your character,
you're essentially burning your NFT and trade for Slime.
Once you get 10 Slime,
you could turn them in for an original mashup NFT
that combines one character from Rugrats and one character from Hey Arnold!
into one unique ultra-rare NFT.
Tommy Pickles plus Helga equals Tolga?
Weird.
There are only 500 mashups available in the collection.
And that's it.
To introduce this NFT collection,
RECUR and Nickelodeon partnered up with Grammy-nominated DJ Steve Aoki
to create a mashup song that combines the theme songs of Rugrats and Hey Arnold!
Certified banger!
Steve Aoki is no slouch when it comes to the NFT space.
And he even has his own metaverse he launched earlier this year called the A0K1VERSE.
He's an avid ambassador of the space.
And he has circulated all corners of the internet promoting blockchain
and how it can change the world.
Since he's an innovator of the space
and The Sandbox has been signing countless partnership deals,
it only makes sense that Aoki gets to throw cake in The Sandbox too, right?
I just get the sand off before I eat it.
Just this week, Aoki announced that he will be releasing 3,333 avatars
with over 100 handcrafted traits in The Sandbox.
With six levels of rarity, these Aoki avatars will have unique functions
where you can earn SAND through playing in the upcoming Alpha Season 3 of Sandbox.
Turn up Bella Ciao
and mint your Steve Aoki avatar for 100 SAND next week
starting with the whitelist, July 25 and 26,
with the public being on the 27.
Finally, Microsoft's ultra popular game Minecraft came out on Wednesday
and said that they want nothing to do with NFTs.
In a blog post,
Minecraft developer Mojang Studios took a firm stance against the ideas of scarcity and exclusion
since it doesn't align with their values.
They stated,
"The speculative pricing and investment mentality around NFTs
takes away from the focus of playing the game and encourages profiteering,
which we think is inconsistent with the long-term joy and success of our players.
It's unfortunate that they took this position,
considering that they would have been a great candidate
to onboard thousands of players into Web3.
It's also unfortunate for NFT Worlds,
a project that uses Minecraft to build their metaverses,
because they plunged 70% since the announcement.
I have to agree with this tweet by AdamMcBride.eth
when he says that Microsoft just had its Blockbuster versus Netflix moment,
and they went full Blockbuster.
They can stay away from NFTs if they want to,
but Minecraft isn't going to stop the progression of Web3
even if they stifle the adoption of it for a few minutes.
Minecraft is the most successful video game in the virtual world history,
but they are not the deciders of the space.
Tim Sweeney, the founder of Epic Games, took a different stance than Mojang Studios
in response to their announcement.
On Wednesday, Sweeney tweeted,
"Developers should be free to decide how to build their games,
and you are free to decide whether to play them.
I believe stores and operating system makers shouldn't interfere by forcing their views onto others.
We definitely won't."
This is a much more level-headed approach,
and this is the kind of guy that knows an opportunity when he sees one.
Let's cross our fingers and hope he can talk Rockstar Games in agreeing with him on this
because that would be a victory royale.
That's all I got.
Deezy out.